There are 38 steps leading from the dressing rooms at the Wankhede Stadium and when Sachin Tendulkar walked down them here with bat in hand for very probably the 1,124th and final innings of his matchless senior career, he could have been forgiven for thinking this was actually one last mile-long descent into a cauldron of suffocation.

Yet an hour and a half later, he gambolled back up those same stairs like a spring lamb with the sweetest 38 runs to his name, still dreaming and still keeping a billion other dreams in tact, having performed with a calm and serenity amid everyone else’s high anxiety that made us appreciate his greatness more than ever.

So whatever happened today on resumption of that innings in his 200th and final Test against the West Indies, Tendulkar’s opening-day performance should always be recalled as the most fabulous exemplar of grace under pressure.

After all, imagine his day, which started in the lift of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel only for him to be faced with a photo of himself above the strapline ‘SACHIN FOREVER’.

Then it was through the lobby to the team bus with even Mumbai’s glitterati guests going gaga, clamouring to just get within touching distance. You can forgive him those headphones.

Once the team bus had subsequently negotiated the conch-blowing, flag-waving frenzy off Marine Drive along the seafront, unnervingly escorted by four sets of armed quick-response teams, he would have seen en route to the dressing rooms that the special ramp he had requested to help his wheelchair-bound mother enter the VIP enclosure had been put in place, festooned in flowers.

Just another reminder then, along with the special 200th cap presented by his captain MS Dhoni, of what an emotional day lay ahead with his family coming to watch him all together for the first time.

Acts of homage were flying around from Bollywood superstars like Aamir Khan swooning in the stadium about his adoration of his perfect Sachin while, elsewhere, PM David Cameron, during a brief visit to India, had sent him a signed gift from the British Government, a photo of the young Sachin after his first Test hundred at Old Trafford.

Goodness, it would have been easy to forget a cricket match was supposed to be breaking out. In the Sachin Tendulkar Stand the fans were cursing Dhoni after his decision to bowl first, once he had won the toss with a specially minted golden coin bearing an image of the head of, er, guess who. Thousands with complimentary tickets, who criminally never turned up when there were 19 million applicants who would have killed for one, presumably assumed Tendulkar would not get to the crease with West Indies 93 for two at lunch.

He must have felt the same, with plenty of time to try to avoid looking at banners proclaiming things like ‘Now Only Humans Will Play Cricket’ or glancing at farewell tweets flashed up on the big screen from Mick Jagger et al. This was very definitely a retirement bash 2013-style.

Yet once the Windies had succumbed pitifully with a late collapse before tea for 182, how must his mindset have changed? How difficult was it for him to then watch India’s openers sailing along easily only to be jolted into them departing in the same over to the increasingly menacing bounce and bite of off-spinner Shane Shillingford?

With the crowd making a din of ecstasy to celebrate poor old Murali Vijay’s exit — has any Indian Test dismissal ever been greeted so gleefully on home soil? — the image of Tendulkar materialising will remain forever indelibly etched. From the other side of the arena, he looked impossibly tiny and vulnerable amid a sea of faces pressed up against the partition grille, screaming in his left ear drum. You wanted to wince for him.

Then at the bottom, as the big screen offered the hugely unhelpful advice “Don’t even blink”, his emotions were ambushed again by a classy guard of honour from the West Indies team and umpires.

Right then, you would have wagered a rupee fortune that his mind must have been so scrambled that he must succumb to a duck — a Bombay duck, no less — in his last Test, just as the finest like Don Bradman, Denis Compton, Gary Sobers and Brian Lara had done in previous generations.

It is often claimed that ‘The Don’ had moist eyes when he was snaffled at the Oval in 1948 after being softened up by three cheers from the England players, yet Shillingford never looked remotely like doing another Eric Hollies job. Tendulkar was just too steely.

Wrapped in his own cocoon of concentration, he seemed

nerveless, perhaps playing with the same carefree simplicity that old hands swear they saw in him when he made an unbeaten ton on this very ground on his first-class

debut at 15.

A slog sweep to take the initiative and get off the mark; a cracking square-cut here, a lovely on-drive there, a touch of delicacy and a

bit of savagery. Each run was

greeted crazily as if it might just be his last.

The last two years, he has only very occasionally resembled the

old Sachin which is why, of course,

it is time for him to go. Yet though

it was only 38 runs, this was a beautiful little cameo, an old champion dredging deep into his memory for one last bravura show.

“I hope he goes out with a bang,” said his old foe Shane Warne afterwards, thinking of a possible ton today. Yet, in a way, he had already provided the explosion. At the last gasp, Sachin had outdone Bradman.